December 18, 2005

Buscemi, Shalhoub set for Van Gogh remakes

by ssavage

By Gregg Goldstein

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Sienna Miller, Steve
Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub and Patricia Clarkson will star in U.S.
remakes of two films by slain Dutch director Theo van Gogh,
their producers said Thursday.

Shalhoub and Clarkson will star in Stanley Tucci's "Blind
Date" as a couple trying to repair their shattered lives and
rebuild their relationship after their child passes away. In
Buscemi's "Interview," the actor-director plays a faltering
political journalist reduced to interviewing one of the
country's top soap opera actresses (Miller).

The late Van Gogh, a distant relative of the famed
impressionist artist, was killed in November 2004 by Islamic
radical Mohammed Bouyeri, who confessed to the Amsterdam
slaying and was sentenced to life in prison. His murder
followed the televised airing of his short film "Submission,"
which portrayed violence against women in Islamic societies.

As a tribute, producers Bruce Weiss (of New York-based
Ironworks Prods.) and Gijs van de Westelaken (of
Netherlands-based Column Prods.) recruited Buscemi, Tucci and
Bob Balaban to direct three films Van Gogh was planning to
remake in English before his death. Each will be shot in
digital video back-to-back next month in New York. Balaban's
"06," the story of a couple whose entire romance begins and
ends on the phone, has yet to be cast.